Like Boris Johnson, I don't get exercised by immigration to the degree some of my countrymen or fellow conservatives do - and am glad TE fights its corner. London (where I live) would be a much poorer place without them in my view. I do want them to learn our language and fit in. We need to avoid ghettoised multiculturalism but not immigration per se.

How can you avoid it. It is a simple fact of nature that most people in a foreign country prefer to live with people who are like them as it makes it feel more like home. Just go to Luton or many of the big towns up North and you will see that what I have said is true.

What exactly is it you seek to conserve? Certainly not your people (ooh, racist!), nor their culture.

You talk about London's vibrancy, yet then provide the limp addendum that you want these same people to "learn the language and fit in" -- evidently unable to piece together that the former is diametrically opposed to the latter.

Of course, we know that the only thing "conservatives" stand for in the current NWO stricture ("freedom" for migrants, and for the elite to live in enclaves that are separate from the "vibrancy" they import) is globalist business cartels. Which is another way to say that you're not only an enemy of your fellow(?) countrymen, but of human rights the world over.

It's certainly interesting that only Western countries are to fully submit to what is, technically and truthfully, genocide as standardised by the UN itself. It's also interesting that a British colonial state -- Israel -- is allowed to be so openly racial and ethnically hostile, retaining its character as a Jewish state by forceful removal of outsiders. All with Western money constantly pouring in.

And so it goes. Blacks are certainly to control their own countries -- and we're told again and again that they do indeed have specifically black countries -- or it is apartheid. Certainky Asians control their own countries. We've been over the Israeli racist state, that operates with the assumption that land forcefully taken is and always has been the Jews' rather than the Palestinians they evicted (with Western funds) and are attempting to exterminate. But Whites having their own countries? The mere thought is horribly racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic and plainly hateful. And hey, there is no such thing as a European country or people, we're told, even as we're simulataneously told that other groups have the right to control their land on racial grounds (play on...), and that the evils of racism are uniquely European/White. Got that?

It's all a great scheme for those controling things, isn't it? Import poverty, destroy the historic European people, and furtehr enrich the world oligarchs/Banking Families.

The Hegelian/Marxist system of the Bankers is a great success for the .0000001% of the world (those Rothschild Bankers and their direct puppets, that is), and a disaster for everyone else. We know which side The Economist is on, don't we?

My colleague is Indian ethnically. She's never been to an Indian restaurant, likes fish & chips, speaks no Indian language and is obsessed with Princess Kate - and doesn't like the EU. You mean that kind of "diametrically opposed"?

I think the British public really deserves to test the medicine the majority so desperately craves. In other words, UK should ban all immigration, leave the EU, kick out all foreigners, and then test how this will impact their standards of living. It's pretty likely that the GDP will collapse, that Scotland will leave the union, but hey, it doesn't really matter, as long as the streets are empty, and no annoying foreign voices are heard!

1. Scotland has a chance to leave the union next year, all polls indicate that it will vote to stay by a factor of 2 to 1.
2. The UK will almost certainly leave the EU within the next 5 years. The status quo simply cannot continue. even if the British Public are denied an in or out referendum. When the EU decides to become a fully federal state. Our Europe Act 2010 will kick in and force a referendum that the government will almost certainly lose.
3. GDP will not collapse because the majority of GDP isn't dependent on the EU anyway, besides since the UK operates a trade deficit with the EU so are you seriously suggesting that the EU would put illegal economic sanctions on the UK that would hurt the EU more than the UK?
4. UKIP are growing by the day and could quite conceivably be the second party in UK politics in 2 years time; this is because the British people are sick of being dictated to by out of touch metropolitan elite Europhile politicians of Con/Lab/Lib.

What "illegal economic sanctions" are you talking about? It's the immigration from EU that's really driving the British population insane, not some abstract EU bureaucrats. To stop that, Britain will need to leave not just EU, but also EFTA and EEA (to remind you, Norway is part of EEA and Switzerland belongs to EFTA, and both allow freedom of movement of labor). By leaving both of these organizations, Britain will suddenly find themselves in the same league as Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and will need to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU from scratch. Good luck with convincing investors that they should stay in Britain, rather than move to the continent. And once Scotland realizes that its future will be outside EU, the voters preferences there will also change.

Scotland's referendum is in 16 months, well before any 2017 EU referendum so if Scotland is still in the UK in 2017 they leave the EU with everyone else.
Britain can quite happily find itself in the same league as Russia, they seem to find no problem attracting investors and are a growing economy unlike the EZ.
Every single one of your Zombie arguments and europhile scare stories about leaving the EU have been comprehensively shot to pieces time and again.
Even today Martin Schulz (EP President) states the EU could break up if the UK leaves; the truth is the EU needs us a lot more than we need them.... and the British left is in a tail spin about peoples hatred of the EU, when it was them that created the problem in the first place. (http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3279/britains-hostility-could...)

Scotsmen are pragmatic people, and since just fifteen thousand (15,000) of the whole Scotland's population of nearly five million (5,000,000) are net contributors to the treasury, and the rest receive more than they pay, do you think they'll kiss goodbye all those subsidies from England?

For this Bagehot it's the unchallengeable orthodoxy that immigrants “are culturally enriching and a necessary boon to Britain’s economy”, and his qualification “hard-working” is unmistakably a propagandist hypocrisy: no one can know beforehand who's hard-working and who's lazy. Cultural enrichment and economic good of immigration is the Pinkos' Gospel – and so has nothing to do with the real situation. Slips of the tongue very often say much more than the speaker intended, and that's what happens in this article, too: immigrants are accused of the intention “to claim employment benefit”. The benefit is actually for UN-employment, but Bagehot's error is actually right: claiming benefits is too often the only employment these people seek.
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So I cannot see what's so grim in the situation when a big problem like immigration – a huge white elephant of 2 million newcomers in 10 years, whom politicians tried to ignore - becomes a big issue? Better late than never...

Immigration is a good thing and all of the points made in this article are true. If you want to dispute that, try the Daily Mail forums, this is where irrational anti immigration views are accepted.
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The statistics contradict your point, immigrants claim far less benefits than locals.

It's not your place to dictate what is accepted and what not on this forum; and it wouldn't be a discussion board if TE required a uniform views to be expressed on any of the topics. So crawl back to the bog you've emerged from.

"It's not your place to dictate what is accepted and what not on this forum"
But he didn't try. And how unsurprising that your uncouth response is "crawl back to the bog you've emerged from". In fact your entire answer betrays your (typical) inability to pay attention to what your opponents are actually saying, never mind debate it with respect to any data.

1/2 of muslim men and 3/4 of muslim women are on benefits. Muslims consider being on benefits Jizya, the protection money tax non muslims have to pay in muslim controlled areas(but doesn't protect gays or women without bags on their heads).

1/2 of muslim men and 3/4 of muslim women are on benefits. Muslims consider being on benefits Jizya, the protection money tax non muslims have to pay in muslim controlled areas(but doesn't protect gays or women without bags on their heads).

"In a poll by YouGov, 69% of respondents said they would reduce net immigration to zero."

Bagehot don't be shy, you also played your part in generating this level of public hostility. Over the years when either Bagehot's or Charlemagne's columns touched on the subject, without fail, you would both be demanding more immigration, and poo-pooing critics of the policy.

But then like most media pundits you are both woefully out of touch with peoples lived experience of mass immigration; the cultural alienation, pressure on services, wage/salary suppression etc.

It is you who is out of touch. Immigrants do not put pressure on wages or employment, this is a myth. They do put pressure on housing and education but this is temporary as facilities are put in place to catch up.

You are rather blasé. Michael Portillio recently said one of the reasons the economy was strong during Blair and Brown's Labour years was that immigrants helped resolve Britain's perennial issue of wage inflation. So, double-edged would be a more honest assessment.

How is it a myth? You are clearly not working class or a tradesman. Why would an employer pay a skilled British tradesman £20ph; when a non unionised immigrant from a dirt poor country will do the job for £6ph (or illegally even lower) and be grateful for it.
Uncontrolled Immigration has destroyed the livelihoods of millions of the British working class and they know who to blame for it.
Its funny you naively think UKIP is just a problem for the Tories. The South Shields By-election will demonstrate to Labour and the metropolitan chattering left just how much UKIP can take from the Labour core demographic in one of their safest seats in the country...... putting every Labour marginal seat within UKIPs range in 2015.

Yeah right. Equally dishonest pseudo scientific research do exist in every area where metropolitan Pinkos are peddling their utopian propaganda. One East Anglia University "specialists" in climate change come to mind...

Well no. As an employer you can see the impact of immigration. Viz I needed a good book keeper in London. Half the 150 who replied were foreign nationals. Usual rate for an experienced freelance British AAT book keeper is circa £12-15. I found a recently UK-graduated Indian citizen with full accountancy qualifications (CIMA) for £8 an hour.

How's a rate from a recent graduate comparable to a rate charged by an experienced accountant?

And by the way, I am not sure that I trust your statement completely. Being non-EU, he should have obtained Tier 2 visa tied to a specific employer, and one of the important conditions is that he's being paid at least the market rate. Did you arrange for him to obtain this visa? If not, then both of you are violating employment law.

Well I needed someone who could use quickbooks and get through the backlog for me. As he was a fully qualified accountant and knew Quickbooks I was confident. He had just finished qualifying at a UK university and so had the right to work in the UK. He has now set up a business and his family have come up with the 50k bond for him to stay in the UK.

My point is that I could hire skilled labour at a far lower price than I would have been able to do before mass migration started in the late 1990s. Anytime I advertise a post 80pc of the applicants are foreign nationals, many of them with MAs or MBAs. As a Brit I feel conflicted. Should I seek to favour Brits or not?

I understand your point, but I am still not sure how he managed to stay in the UK, as legally he's obliged to obtain a Tier 2 visa which is tied to a specific employer (and graduating from a UK university no longer gives a right to stay in the country). I have also never heard about 50K bond which enables non-EU people to work in the UK, and I am pretty well-versed in immigration rules. The only alternative is a large investment into opening a business (of at least 200,000 pounds), but I don't see how working at minimum wages is going to make it profitable for anyone. So, whenever a non-EU worker approaches you saying that they have a right to work in the UK, be careful, they may be lying to you (you see, I am a non-EU worker myself, and I very much care about following the rules).

this was a year ago and he'd just left oxford brookes and showed me a visa allowing him to stay and work for i think 18 mths. or am i naive? in any case the pt is there has been a huge influx of energetic dynamic people. Creme de la creme in Poland want to come to the UK because it is the only large English speaking economy in Europe. This I think is why the UK should be granted some sort of exception to free labour rules in Europe. Everyone these days learns English in school, on the web, on film and youtube. So they want to come to UK, not Germany.

this was a year ago and he'd just left oxford brookes and showed me a visa allowing him to stay and work for i think 18 mths. or am i naive? in any case the pt is there has been a huge influx of energetic dynamic people. Creme de la creme in Poland want to come to the UK because it is the only large English speaking economy in Europe. This I think is why the UK should be granted some sort of exception to free labour rules in Europe. Everyone these days learns English in school, on the web, on film and youtube. So they want to come to UK, not Germany.

You obviously have not taken Economics 101. The more people there are competing for a job, the lower the wage the employer has to offer. This is as fundamental and sound an economic concept as supply and demand.

Employers don't have to pay as much when there's 100 people who want the job as they would if there were only 5 people who wanted the job.

Thus, anytime anything happens to increase the amount of people looking for a limited number of jobs (immigration in this case), wages are going to decrease. They simply will. This is indisputable.

Your logic is flawed. Every immigrant that arrives creates and takes 1 job. For every group of immigrants that arrive, more teachers, fireman, shopkeepers, construction workers, 'bin' men, council workers, policemen, barbers, sales assistants etc etc are needed to support the increased population.
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Perhaps it is you who should go back to class? As I already mentioned, many academic studies have already shown you to be wrong.

Teachers, firemen, shopkeepers, etc don't just appear out of nowhere. Those people already existed prior to a group immigrating. Immigration might spur a store to hire a new person to serve the immigrants, but if the immigrants had never come, that person could have worked the job the immigrants took.

There are no additional jobs being created here for the native born worker.

It is really quite simple - Immigrants bring as many jobs as they take. Immigration represents an increase in population - you don't tell parents off for having children which might eventually steal someones job do you?
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Immigration is jobs neutral. In practice it is economically beneficially as most if not all academic studies will show you if you could get past your xenophobia.

How many countries allow uncontrolled immigration? USA doesnt, Canada doesnt, China doesnt, Brazil doesnt, Zimbabwe doesnt, Russia doesnt so why should the UK?
Immigration is fine and most UK residents are happy with it. But it must be controlled.
Calling UKIP or other groups that want control of the UK's borders back, xenophobes is hardly entering into a serious bebate. What ever you think of Nigel Farage, He is focusing the country onto that debate.
I support him.

And many new members of EU are just steps, or revolving doors to the UK for many from the Third World.
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But even this is not necessary for leaving immigration out of control. When you have 2 million newcomers in the recent 10 years, and many more millions from the time of India partition (1947), what can you do when Pakistanis send their daughters to their native villages to be forcibly married to first cousins?
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Very often those medieval spouses are illiterate and culturally alien, but they come to the UK legally... and after that the legal system looks other way when at the age of 12 they stop their daughters from attending school to send them away, too, for an arranged wedding, or honour kill them and commit all kinds of abuses. This continues generation after generation, and changes the Britain in a way which Bagehot and other propagandists of "multiculturalism" and unrestricted immigration obviously approve.
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Excellently researched analysis of this situation is to be found in Theodore Dalrymple's book Rhe New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism.

Did you actually read their manifesto? UKIP doesn't just want to control immigration, it wants it completely stopped for 5 years. Yes, no immigration at all, for whatever reasons (study, marriage, work etc). Just read it, and decide for yourself, if this unprecedented proposal is sane or lunatic.
Oh, and you'll also have to apply for a visa if you want to go to any European country (even for tourist purposes), because that's what UKIP wants to impose on them.

And no restrictions apply for British citizens who live abroad in the EU.

Take away this right, and you will end up with 3 million non-British citizens being shipped to the continent, in exchange for 3 million Brits who currently live there. On balance, you will have very little change in the total population, and huge reduction in welfare on both sides (it will be just one example of negative consequences). Does this sound like an optimal outcome?

Unfortunately, America does in fact allow uncontrolled immigration. The Obama administration has issued de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants, without passing it through Congress first, and has flat out told the public that they are not even attempting to catch and deport illegal immigrants.

And, of course, this is causing the same problems here as it is in the UK. Massive wage depression, excessive pressure on public institutions (especially public schools), extremely high unemployment (don't trust the government figures for this; they don't count people who have given up looking. Real unemployment in America is at 15-20%), etc.

"Massive wage suppression"; "extreme unemployment" etc.
When was the last time you bothered to check how many H1-B workers are allowed into the US each year, and how this compared to the total unemployment in your country? What percentage of the latter is accounted for by the former?

stop blaming Obama for a situation neither he nor Democrats created. And stop lying. There's no de facto amnesty, in fact Obama has been harsher on immigrants than Bush has. Also the reichwing wants the insane solution that doesn't punish businesses for hiring illegal immigrants, but just the immigrants.
Yet another example of the blame the victim politics the ReichWing is so infamous for.
like blaming poor blacks for the financial crisis, instead of the banks and the corruption allowing SEC,
like blaming woman for getting pregnant after being raped, the recent case in Iowa comes to mind, and of course your fearless leader, rash limp b---s

To sum it up, he's allowing, OVER the authority of Congress who received NO say in this, illegal immigrants who came here before age 16 to stay. That is de facto amnesty; heck, it's even de jure amnesty!

He has unilaterally, with no input from the elected Congressional representatives Americans voted for, decided that his desire to swamp the nation in immigrants they don't want entitles him to commit what is tantamount to treason.

And I have proof that Americans do not want this. Here is a poll released in February that states that 53% of Americans believe most or all illegal immigrants should be deported. Only 5% think all illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay.

I also have proof that Obama is refusing to deport illegal immigrants, despite the inherent national security risks in failing to do so.

The Obama administration (not just Obama himself, this treachery includes many people working for him) has already released 2,000 illegal immigrants from prison citing the sequester, and planned to release 3,000 more throughout March.

The sequester is no excuse for releasing potentially dangerous illegal aliens into our cities and towns. The sequester isn't even a budget cut, it's just a reduction in the planned increase in spending. We're still spending more in FY 2013 than we did in FY 2012.

He and big business are colluding on this, you mark my words. Pro-immigration groups have spent $1.5 billion on lobbying for their cause, which is why both parties seem so eager to pass further amnesty legislation against the wishes of the American voters.

As for your further comments implying I am a Republican, you could not be more mistaken. The Republicans are just as pro-massive-immigration as the Democrats, and I support an immigration moratorium. I do not vote for either of the major parties; I consider them both to be treasonous and treacherous to the American people.

The law currently allows 65,000 H1-B visas to be issued each year, but because unused H1-Bs intended for a certain country can be used for a different country the following year, much more than 65,000 are actually issued each year.
In FY 2011, 129,134 H1-B visas were issued.
Citation: http://www.travel.state.gov/visa/statistics/statistics_5641.html
Now, added on top of those receiving the new visas are those who are already in the U.S. on an H1-B visa from a previous fiscal year. The typical duration of an H1-B visa is three years, but it can be extended to six. Even if every H1-B visa holder went home after three years, that still means there would be around 390,000 H1-Bs in the U.S. at any given time.
(I multiplied 130,000 by three to make it simpler than the actual 129,134 value, and because it somewhat corrects for the underestimate of assuming people stay for only three years, which they do not always.)
390,000 immigrants, here in America, from only one visa category. There are currently 185 different visa categories, so this is only a small piece of the pie.
We're letting in this many people at a time when the government says we have 7-8% unemployment (and when we actually have 15-20% in reality). Even if the government's figure was accurate, this would still be ridiculous! Every job currently held by an H1-B is another job that an American college graduate can't get!
This is why we have college grads working at Starbucks or McDonalds, making $9.00 an hour! This is why so many of them are unemployed or underemployed! This is absolutely disgusting, it sickens me to my core. America should be putting its own people first, just like most countries (but not the U.K.) do.
I do not know what the exact percentage of American unemployment is directly related to H1-B visa holders. But I do know that basic Economics dictates that the larger the labor supply, the lower the resulting wages will be, with the worker willing to work for the cheapest being the one who gets the job.
If you need more proof that being pro-immigration is no "humanitarian" or "anti-racist" position, just look at who the largest proponents of increased immigration are. It's BIG BUSINESS. Microsoft is willing to pay the government millions of dollars to be allowed to bring over more H1-Bs.http://seattletimes.com/html/microsoft/2019276648_microsoft28m.html
You'll notice that Microsoft is whining about "skilled labor shortages". They, and other companies with similar goals, like to complain that there's not enough Americans with STEM degrees graduating.
But that is demonstrably a lie. If there were really a shortage, you would see wages in those fields rising as companies competed for the small amount of available labor.
This is not what we see happening in the U.S. Wages have not risen and there is no indication that there is a shortage. Big business simply doesn't want to have to pay real wages to American workers.http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-microsoft-repo...

So what if there are, as you claim, 390,000 H1B visa holders living in the US? You then say that the real unemployment rate in the US is 20%- ok, let's not dispute this. But then it means that there are about 30 million unemployed persons in the US, and 390,000 is just 1% of this number. Therefore, to argue that work-related immigration has caused this unemployment is not very coherent.

Lets go with that 37 million number though, for simplicity's sake. If we assume 30 million Americans are unemployed, and there are 37 million immigrants here...

That would seem to account for it. Even if only half of those immigrants are working (which is probably a massive underestimate), that would still be 18.5 million taking jobs that could have helped bring down American unemployment.

Really explain to me how it can be racist not to give loans to blacks that their credit scores show they couldn't pay for, only to have Barney Frank's CRA force banks to give loans, then when blacks cant pay its racist to have given blacks loans? I don't blame blacks for the financial crisis I blame the leftists like Barney Frank that ignore reality.

I am always a little leery of statistics that are used to disprove the effect of immigrant populations on locals.

I live in a state with large immigrant populations, many of whom are here illegally. I owned a small business in a neighborhood that was undergoing revitalization and the local African American residents often complained about Latin American immigrants taking their jobs. Whether or not it was true did not really matter, it was the perception and it caused tension between the groups.

The truth lies somewhere between the rumblings of those who are facing uncertain and changing futures and the often cited statistics. I think that there are often racist undertones in these situations, but it should not always be used as a knee jerk condemnation of people's uneasiness about immigrant issues.

***well, immigrants shouldn't always receive knee jerk condemnation for every bad thing in society. That's simply racism, like it or not. They might be scared, but why take it out on the immigrants?***
On the other hand, according to the fascist, liberal, thought-crime state Whites should be blamed for all the ills of society, including any conflict with alien peoples that have immigrated to their homeland.
If things are so bad for the immigrants, they can always go home. But well know that the conditions in European countries are far better than the third world, which is a major reason these immigrants come. The problem is, they import their culture -- inherently flawed, disagreeable and often homicidal to Western culture -- and that, combined with their huge and ever-growing numbers, means that inevitably a country like England will become as backward as their homeland(s).
Yet we're all to accept this. Why? Because the globalist oligarchs want it.
With all the whining for immigrants, where's the sense of empathy for natives? Instead their told that the land is not their own and that there is no such thing as either the White race or the English people, while also being told that English Culture and the White Race are to blame for all the problems that these minorities face.
Welcome to the double-talk and hate of the Global Elite. The Economist is certainly on board. On board totally, with European Genocide.

As I stated in my comment, I do believe that racism sometimes plays a role - but not always.

As many people have noted on this post, many people are more concerned with overcrowded living spaces and lack of jobs than they are about the race of their neighbors.

Having had the good fortune to visit Britain many times over the course of 10 years, I noticed on each successive visit how much worse traffic was -even in small cities and how overbuilt many areas were becoming.

If you long for a time when things were seemingly more simple and peaceful that does not mean you are a racist. Unrealistic yes, but not a racist.

If the EU truly were a competent and effective solution, then it would seem that people would be happy and prosperous staying in their own countries.